Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Blacktail, Whitetail

This little whitetail deer (photographed on my birthday two days ago) is still in the process of becoming. Ribs show, although winter is coming soon, sparse coat is partly shed and not yet fully renewed. Small antlers are still in velvet. And he has to get his sustenance from grass!

That excellent poet and friend, Lucia Perillo, lives west in the country of the blacktail deer.How delighted I was to find this poem in The New Yorker.

BLACKTAIL

Like tent caterpillars, we cover the landscape with meshbecause of the deer, the ravenous deer.They enter the yard with the footworkof cartoon thieves—the stags wear preposterousinverse chandeliers, the does bearing fetusesvisibly kicking inside of their cage. And whocan not-think of that crazy what-if: what ifa hoof tears through? Would you callthe dogcatcher or an ambulance?

The problem’s their scale—you might as well parka Cadillac in the house. Or go be a hunterinside a big plastic goose, a fibreglass burgeron top of a hamburger stand. The way they tiptoepast the bird feeder, rattling the seedthe squirrels have spilled. Then they eatsomething outrageous, like the pansyall the way up on the stoop. Before they leapinto the ravine with a noise like cymbals!

But isn’t that how things end, with a cymbal crash? Leavingyou at the window with not even your rage.Because you cannot rage at such delicate skeletons—that is a social misdemeanor—though they have steppedtoward us the way the founding fathersmust have once approached the natives, with their armsextended, though they bore disease.

Lucia Perillo

The New Yorker, August 25, 2014

Jays at the feeder, also on my birthday. Lucia would be more likely to have the Stellar's Jay.
On the news of the Buson 100: the first day was easy. but it gets harder each day! And I am only on day three! Wish me luck!